Good Thanksgiving, I hope, my American comrades? All full from the turkey and familial reminiscing? Nothing like that here, but I did have the first organised Christmas dinners/parties that tend to start up around now. This one being at work, to facilitate easier flights home for those coming in for it. First time on a boat on a canal, of all things. Fun to see the locks opening and the water level changing when you’re on the thing!

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Two weeks ago it dawned on me that, with July 10^th having landed on a Monday this year, I’d missed a prime opportunity for a themed throwback feature on that day. As July 10^th is the day Fimfiction was launched in Beta, I could have had a week themed around the site’s 12^th anniversary. The bad news is I missed my chance. The good news is, with today being July 31^st, it’s prime for an even better celebration of the site’s twelve years.

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Hey, remember when I once tried themed character weeks? Yeah, me neither: it had four attempts early on*, but they were more just fics matching the chosen theme then forming a statement. About time for a better revival, I say. How’s about a quintet of Cadance fics, all adding up to something to properly say about her?

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And, here’s December. Christmas is approaching again fast. So much to do, not enough time. Got gifts to decide on and buy, a Jinglemas entry to write, other fics to at least not fully pause work on, plus video games to play and Ponyfics to write and review. A ghost’s work never dies, you might say. But, you know, I’m okay with it. I like being busy enough to not be lazy, without being so busy it gets to be too much. If that makes sense. I’ve at least already read and prepped

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Nice advantage of a Bank Holiday Monday is I don’t have to have Monday Musings^TM ready to go on Sunday night, owing to not working up to nearly posting time of 6PM UTC (distinct from GMT, which doesn’t account for time zones). Meaning I can, and am, throwing this together shortly before pressing submit instead. Not a bad side bonus to national holidays always giving the following Monday off.

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Just before Christmas, something interesting came up. Completely breaking major company convention, Netflix has released viewing hours for the period of January-June 2023 for every title that had at least 50,000 watch hours. Which is over 18,000 titles. Several of which are a property to do with colourful pastel magical equines.

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Technically it hasn’t been that long since my last Author Spotlight, just over two months. But the rough three-month gap is just a guideline meant to make them only happen when natural and justified. If I’m liking an author’s work enough to want to read more and do a spotlight, that’s proof enough it’s organic. Today’s author certainly qualifies, off charming work that always brightened me up. The author being, Kris Overstreet.

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Well, that was definitely a bit of a wallop revealed last week, wasn’t it? All the same, I’m relieved the announcement of Monday Musings’ end as a regular, scheduled upload series went over well. Gave me greater confidence about the hard decision, enough that I can set it aside from active discussion here for the next few weeks until it goes live.

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I don’t know about America, but the price of travelling is going up more and more here. Just got booked in for UK PonyCon in October, nearly six whole months ahead, yet the hotel (same as last year) wasn’t even £10 less despite getting there two months earlier. Not even offsetting the £8 increase in ticket price. Then there’s the flights and if train prices will be different by then… yep, the worldwide travelling cost spike in the wake of COVID sure isn’t slowing down!

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It’s probably not a surprise I don’t play party multiplayer games much. What I have said in here has probably spelt out that I prefer games with clear, linear objectives with definitive ends, and while I’m all for playing with friends, in person or online, doing the same against strangers runs its course once I’m used to the game. So it was certainly an experience last Friday when I found myself playing that (by now ancient ) early lockdown hit, Fall Guys.

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Anyone else ever remember giving something up for Lent when they were young? Even though it hasn’t been a thing in close to two decades for me, I’m reminded of it by two people in the house doing it for the first time in donkey’s years. Okay, one person, my mom to combat her sweet tooth: my brother is merely relaxing on the soft drinks outside of before and after sports training/matches. But that’s still 1.5 more than usual.

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I don’t know how long ago it feels to you all that I announced Monday Musings would be ceasing regular weekly uploads, and moving to uploads only when I happened to have enough eligible fics, at max fortnightly (it was five weeks ago, for the record). But given I’d been wrestling with it since March, it feels long enough coming I can barely believe this is the final outing. And yet… here we are.

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I had planned to let G5’s end sit for a while before publicly reflecting on it again (the final TYT short, off the series' cancellation, released 39 days ago). And that does still stand. However, a well-informed PonyTuber, Cxcd, posted a video last month breaking down a lot of relatively-unknown facts about G5’s production, its ambitions, and exactly why, behind the scenes, it blew up. One I think even people who don’t care about G5 should see.

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And so the catchup of missed Author Spotlights concludes on the same month that marks a full year’s worth of them. Which is a good time to put them on ice, least as far as being regular features goes. Enough of them were strains to assemble that it’s better to do them when they come going forward. But if they are to finish now, I could hardly think of a better author to do so with than Impossible Numbers.

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Giving the themed week thing another whirl today. This one has been in the planning for much longer than Cadance’s outing, mind, all the way back to January, if you can believe it. Which feels fitting for background pony Berry Punch, more often than not portrayed as a barpony, that it would gestate until the time is right.

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One major advantage of having a hefty backlog of publishable reviews (if obviously nothing like the several months and million-odd words that PaulAsaran stockpiles), is that it gives me the bandwidth to do other Fimfiction things. Ideally writing my own stuff, though there’s no accounting for having the optimal drive all the time. More obviously, it also means I can pitch with others. The odd bout of pre-reading or editing, for sure. But also contest judging. Evidently FoME has a screw loose,

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You know, after a holiday season where I let a lot that had happened throughout the year get to me, and keep me not quite as relaxed and joyous as I could or should have been, I think I’m feeling more at ease with things. Deliberately taking a week off not just from the more high-maintenance hobbies (fic writing, etc.), but from even thinking about them, did me some good.

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Very much a throwback this week, which feels appropriate for the first set in Year 2 of these Ponyfic reviews; not only is this a week of just short one-shots akin to when I started out, but I’m finally back to doing Author Spotlights again (the Ninjadeabeard one being a special and timed feature). This week, it’s Tinybit92.

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Due to the eternal conundrum that is air travel, next week’s Monday Musings will go up late, as I will still be airborne on the way back from UK PonyCon at the usual time of 18:00 BST. It’ll still go up before midnight, as I’ll have it ready to go before departing on Friday, give or take a one-paragrapher on how it went to add before hitting Post; you can’t get me to miss a day that easily! 👻

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